The theory of inflation says that for a tiny fraction of a second, just after the Big Bang, the universe expanded so quickly that all distances grew by much more than a trillion trillion trillion times! Why would anyone believe such a crazy claim? In this talk I’ll show how this theory explains many of the features we observe in our universe today. I’ll also describe how this theory has made detailed predictions that have since been successfully tested observationally. In short, we have good reason to believe that we can accurately describe an event that lasted a fraction of a second, almost 14 billion years ago! In this talk you’ll learn how much we know, and how much we still don’t know, about the very early universe.
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